The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,135

so your father informed me, and it strikes randomly, at no set or predictable interval. I have no wish to stand out in the bitter cold for what could be hours. Yet if we wait until we hear the bells begin to ring, the whole display could well be over by the time we reach the Folly.’

‘You need not worry about that,’ she replied. ‘Over the years, we townsfolk have developed a second sense about when the timepiece is going to strike. There is a tension in the air, like the onset of a thunderstorm. And not only in the air. We feel it in our bones, in our hearts, a vibration that cuts right through us.’

‘It sounds painful,’ I told her.

She shrugged. ‘We are used to it.’

‘But how extraordinary!’ I continued. ‘How long does it take to develop this sensitivity?’

‘No time at all,’ she said. ‘We are born with it, you see.’

I did not see. Nothing in my knowledge of horology or natural science could explain how the workings of a clock might impress themselves into the bones and sinews of a single human body, much less an entire town. Not that I doubted her. Thinking back, I realized that I had witnessed the truth of her assertion many times over in fleeting expressions that passed across the faces of the townsfolk in the moments before the bells of the clock began to peal, looks of anxious anticipation, as if at some signal I could not discern, followed by smiles and sighs indicative of release. These quirks of behaviour had puzzled me, but I had not inquired into them, thinking them related somehow to my presence. I felt no such connection myself. In truth, I envied it. It did not seem right that these people, who knew nothing of our art, should manifest a deeper affinity to the flow of time than even the masters of our Worshipful Company could lay claim to.

Thus it was that Corinna and I made our way early one afternoon to Wachter’s Folly. When we emerged from the lamplit passage into the open, the glare of sunlight reflecting from the mounds of snow and ice that had more than half buried the town left me blinded. Even after my vision cleared, I stood frozen in place, dazzled by the stark beauty of the scene. I do not think I had ever seen a sky so blue; it made my eyes ache, and still does, in memory. The jagged peaks of the surrounding mountains, and the upthrust dagger of the glacier that seemed to stand guard over the town, glittered as if encrusted with diamonds. The air sparkled with ice crystals swept up in a biting wind that blew without pause, piercing my clothes, my skin, all the way to the bone. I shivered, still weaker from my ordeal than I had realized until that moment. It was the first time in weeks that I had stood under an open sky.

Corinna put a steadying arm around my waist and asked if I wanted to return to the Hearth and Home. I shook my head and told her no. ‘Then we must hurry,’ she said. ‘The bells are about to strike.’

I swear that I could feel, through her touch, the same thrumming vibration I had felt weeks ago when I had laid my hands upon the figures decorating the tower’s façade. Those figures were less visible now, buried more deeply beneath fallen snow; even the great dragon that coiled about the tower was lost to view, only bits and pieces of its serpentine length exposed, like the gnarled roots of an immense tree.

The pathways shovelled into the snow, by which I had approached and half circled the clock on my last visit, were still in place, well maintained despite the mountains of snow on either side, a testament to the industry of the townsfolk, and especially that of Adolpheus, who, as I had seen, tirelessly laboured to keep the paths shovelled, the covered passages repaired, the lamps lit.

Corinna led me forward. The bronze hands of the clock were in motion, the hour hand creeping slow as molasses in a clockwise direction while the minute hand drifted in retrograde. I could hear, above the whistling of the wind, muffled sounds of activity from within the edifice as the mechanism governing the automatons engaged. As before, I felt a kind of trepidation or wariness, a hesitation to come too close that grew stronger as I drew nearer, until